Since when we launched the emulator, some times ago, we've been collecting feedback and improving this software demonstrator. Bugs have been fixed, performances have been improved, and several new features have been added. We've produced a new video, very short, to present the major ones:
Drag and Drop: it is possible to create new private messages by simply dragging and dropping a person to the messages channel.
Highlight: related things are coloured in yellow, simply move your mouse around to quickly see what's related.
Comments: posts with new comments since the last visit to the emulator appear in green, and by opening a...
You all have the chance to use the emulator to test our metaphor, and experience how it works (please dedicate 3 minutes of your time to our anonymous evaluation). Our presentation page presents the design rationale along with the basic functions. However, when I present the emulator to people (in person) there's a question that always pops out: how did you do it? what platform is it based on?
Answers are pretty simple: we started by extending the blog (based on Wordpress) with some plug-ins available on the Web, and I wrote some more from scratch to implement the functionalities we...
The emulator has been online for about three weeks now, and we have constantly been trying to improve the user experience by adding some features. In these three weeks we have also tried to get in touch with new members of the website, and some experts from the industry to hear about their opinions with regards to the emulator. The comments that we received have initiated lot of discussions and food for thoughts in recent days. Some of these discussions, and comments are on the website (here, here , here, and here), while some of them are in your minds....
I've recently received some feedback from people who have perceived the itsme emulator as a standalone application we are proposing beside or in place of our operating system – e.g., we got an extremely interesting comparison with Facebook and Google Wave. At the moment, this is far from being true, and I'll explain why in a few moments. Meanwhile, I also received a request for opinion on G.ho.st (see picture below).
My first reaction has been firing out an email saying
"This stuff is old, I've been seeing things like this around for years now: e.g., EyeOS and all others mentioned on...
Here is a short video clip. We took a shot at it, so comments are very...
In a very sharp article around disabled inclusion in design, Donald Norman focuses on the possibility of making accessible design also delightful and aestetically pleasant.
I'd add that this is not only a good campaign to fight for, but also something that could make our design better. It wouldn't be the first case of something designed for disabled made useful to the general public (see remote TV control, for instance). So, taking a look at itsme, evaluating the pros and cons as far as I can see them, here I am bouncing out Norman's challenge to your community.
Is this tool accessible...
Alessandro and I have been presenting itsme at Communities and Technologies 2009 in State College, Pennsylvania (USA). Our demo started with a very short description of the itsme idea (scenario and approach) and we went then into the details of the two things we have ready to be shown in these days: the emulator (try it out!) and our 0.3 technical prototype (still for internal use only, sorry).
We presented to quite a large number of people (we had three one-hour demo sessions) and –remember we are at an academic conference with people from the CSCW research area – we collected...
We have mentioned about an itsme emulator quite a few times on this blog, which is now under development and would be available very soon on our website. What do we mean by an emulator? It is something that would help us start presenting the metaphor of stories and venues in an interactive way. In other words, we want you to start playing with venues months before itsme is in the market, and we want you to do it in a context you know well: the Web. The relationship between itsme and the Web is something on which we can...
It seems like most of the latest posts on this blog have been dedicated to itsme's communication rather than on our software advancements, but it's because our tech team is working very hard on three ongoing projects.
Firstly, we are almost ready to release our new community website. We have designed a new set of interaction facilities for our fans (you!): we are beta testing the code and polishing the layout, so it's a matter of days before we put it online. In our new website you'll be able to:
submit contents for publication (there will be a section dedicated to discussions,...
